Roselyn Romero

HELLO!

Long time, no post. My apologies. There have been some major changes in my life the past three months, and I needed time to fully process, adjust, and adapt to my new life.

First, let’s start with the most obvious shift:

1. I moved out of Oxnard and now live in San Luis Obispo, where I attend Cal Poly SLO.
   I’m now a Mustang! At Cal Poly, I’m majoring in journalism and minoring in law & society. I’m part of the University Honors Program and was recently offered a position to work as a News Multimedia Journalist for Mustang News, the media group on campus.
   Although it’s definitely not the school I’d envisioned myself attending when I was a senior applying to different colleges (I was eyeing USC for the longest time), Cal Poly SLO has become my new home. I’ve grown to love the tight-knit community that comprises SLO – especially the Filipinx community – and have even made a plethora of new friends, who have become some of the most genuine people I’ve ever known.
   In my opinion, making friends in college is so much better than in high school because in high school, your friends were people you ran into every day because you shared the same classes, but in college, you actually have to put in extra time and effort into seeing your friends because you all have different majors, interests, extracurricular activities, sports, jobs, and more. My social life has become one of my priorities in college (not above academics, of course) because it keeps me sane amidst a tumultuous storm of midterms, internship applications, papers, and stress.
2. I’m single.
   Another incredibly huge shift for me in college has been being single. I won’t go into details as to what happened between the two of us, but I’m extremely thankful for my previous relationship and learned so many lessons from it.
   Though the breakup officially occurred before I started college, don’t let this discourage you from pursuing a long-distance relationship (LDR) if you and your partner genuinely want one. I have a handful of friends who are happily in an LDR and have managed to make it work out, but for others (including myself), it can and will be an obstacle. Being in a relationship is challenging on its own, but being in a relationship in which both parties are geographically separated and are full-time college students is of an entirely different caliber. If you and your significant other can handle an LDR, do it, by all means. Otherwise, it’s totally normal to choose to be single, to not date, or to “casually date” in college.
3. My mental health hasn’t been at its best.
   With adjustment comes stress, and with copious amounts of stress comes a whole slew of mental health problems.
   Because of the academic rigors that Cal Poly has erected and the pressure I place upon myself to be an exemplary student, I recently relapsed.
   Am I sharing this because I’m proud of it? No. I’m sharing this because I want anyone who is struggling in college to know that it’s OK not to feel OK. College is tough, especially for first-years experiencing their first time away from home in their first quarter/semester of college. Though social media may portray a completely different picture, Cal Poly has been a tempestuous rollercoaster of fun, loneliness, pleasure, anxiety, excitement, and depression.
   I’m gradually getting back on my feet, but I’m indebted to all the people and on-campus resources that have helped me go through this rough patch in my life. These people have seen me at my weakest and still go out of their way to ensure I’m all right, and for that, I am incredibly grateful.

Though my schedule in college has been crazy hectic (I wake up at 5:30 a.m. every day to study at the library at 6 a.m. and go to sleep every night at midnight or 1 a.m.), I will do my absolute best to stay on top of this blog. It’s actually gratifying to post on this blog again, and I hope that by writing about my experiences throughout college – the ugly and the beautiful moments – I can help my readers cope with their own struggles and look forward to the crazy, yet fun transitionary period that is college.